Malachite got such a beautiful name due to its color resembling the green of the specks on peacock feathers. Because of its beautiful color, it has become an ancient jade material. The chemical composition of malachite is a copper-bearing carbonate mineral, which has an important significance for the mining industry - indicator copper ore.

Malachite tends to be closely symbiotic with azurite, an alkaline copper carbonate mineral, known as limestone in ancient times, which is produced in the oxide zone of copper deposits and is a secondary product of the oxidation of copper-containing sulfides.

Both malachite and azurite can be used as copper ore to refine copper.

Malachite and azurite are used to smelt pure copper, which requires a temperature of about 1,000 degrees. At present, the maximum temperature in the center of the special combustion chamber for firing pottery by big-headed ants is estimated to only reach seven or eight hundred degrees of furnace temperature, which is purely an estimate, because the protagonist does not have a thermometer to measure.

He judged by the fact that the surface of the fired pottery did not produce a natural glaze layer - if it was in a furnace of 1,000 degrees or more, the surface of the pottery could easily be fired to form a glaze layer.

In addition, the color of the flame center can also be used as a basis for judging the temperature, the temperature of the red flame is relatively low, while the temperature of the orange flame is often above 1,000 degrees, and the flame with higher lines will be yellow and white. The color of the flame center of the combustion chamber is a darker red.

If you want to smelt copper, the temperature of the existing combustion chamber is not sufficient, and the furnace temperature must be increased. The protagonist is not without a way to increase the temperature of the furnace.

For example, to change the fuel from ordinary firewood to charcoal, a new charcoal combustion chamber is required. In a charcoal combustion chamber, the cut wood or wood raw material is incompletely burned to form a dark brown or black porous solid fuel. The smelting of bronzes in the Shang Dynasty and the ironware of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period in China both used charcoal, and it is completely feasible for the protagonist to use charcoal to smelt copper. The charcoal particles cut by the ants are extremely small, and their firepower will also be enhanced.

In addition, charcoal is an impure amorphous carbon that maintains the original structure of the wood and the residual tar in the pores, and its hygroscopicity can be used to observe climate change and reduce the humidity of nests.

In addition to the use of charcoal, the protagonist can also introduce new ventilation devices.

The current combustion chamber mainly relies on natural air circulation channels composed of flue pipes and entrances and exits. After the technology of the nitrate scale matures, the protagonist can make a bellows to pressurize the combustion chamber blast. Although this blast is not very efficient in terms of the size of the ant, it still has a certain effect.

However, when the furnace temperature is increased, the existing way of maintaining the fire can only be abandoned.

Now, when firing pottery, ants are constantly being put into the fire with new fuel, and then the worker ants guarding the fire are constantly stirring the fire with long wooden sticks to keep the fire alive.

In the vicinity of a firewood that is not too hot, the ants can tolerate this temperature as long as they are far away. But if copper is to be smelted, as soon as the furnace temperature increases, the ants will not be able to stay in the smelting room.

But without the care of ants, the small fire will soon be extinguished due to the lack of new fuel, which is almost a dead knot.

The solution that the protagonist can think of is that the new copper smelting chamber must be large enough, at least the size of a barrel of pure water in the human world. The smelting chamber is equipped with natural ventilation ducts and blower devices, and the bottom of the smelting chamber should be equipped with a strainer and a pipe to draw out the molten copper to introduce the molten copper into the mold.

At that time, the strips of charcoal and copper ore can be stacked in layers into a structure with a hole in the middle, and then left after ignition, leaving the combustion chamber to work on its own.

After the liquid copper is formed in a mold, it is then polished with rough stones to make the necessary tools, including the copper wire needed by the main character.

Of course, these are only theoretical solutions, and there are certainly difficulties to be solved in practice. But the protagonist is not in a hurry, it is winter, the ants cannot go out, the copper ore in the other side nest is far from quenching the thirst, and the work of building the smelting room will have to wait at least until the beginning of spring.

So, for the rest of the winter, the protagonist can slowly refine his belly.

And once you master the technology of smelting copper, it will be a huge leap forward for your own strength.

For human civilization, copper is one of the earliest metals used by human beings, as early as prehistoric times, people began to mine open-pit copper mines, and use the obtained copper to make weapons, tools and other utensils, the use of copper has a profound impact on the progress of early human civilization, marking the ability of human beings to use metals, but also marking the ability of human beings to extract chemical elements that do not exist or rarely exist in nature.

After being able to refine copper, human beings entered the era of copper and stone, also known as the era of gold and stone, which was between the Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age, and the primitive agriculture and animal husbandry and handicraft industry of human beings reached a high level. Stone tools were mainly used at that time, but there were also a small number of small bronze tools: the main tools and weapons were still stone tools, and stone tools continued to play a leading role in the field of production and social life; At the same time, there were a variety of metal tools with bronze as the main body, which were made by cold forging and smelting and casting, and most of them were small tools and ornaments. There is also alloy copper produced due to the abundance of natural symbiotic mineral resources.

The reason why copper tools cannot completely replace stone tools is that copper is soft, and its hardness is not up to the requirements of production tools.

However, after copper can be refined, then another important copper alloy - bronze - is "at your fingertips".

Bronze is the earliest alloy in the history of human metal smelting and casting, and it is an alloy with tin or lead added to copper, which has special importance and historical significance.

Compared to copper, bronze has high strength and low melting point, like smelting bronze with 25% tin, the melting point will be reduced to 800 degrees Celsius, while pure copper has a melting point of 1083 degrees Celsius.

Once tin ore can be found, the existing combustion chamber for firing pottery in Dongyang Castle will be able to handle the work of small-scale bronze production, and there will be no need to build a new smelting room.

In addition, bronze has the advantages of good castability, high hardness, strong plasticity, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, bright color, etc., and is suitable for casting various tools and weapons.

Therefore, after the appearance of bronze, human civilization quickly abandoned stone tools and entered the Bronze Age.

Bronze was made in 3,000 B.C., and the first bronze appeared in the valley of the two rivers in ancient Babylon 6,000 years ago. In China, 4500~4000 years ago, in the Longshan era, which is equivalent to the legendary era of Yao Shunyu, there was bronze technology. Ancient documents record that people have begun to smelt and cast bronze at that time, and in the Longshan period ruins in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, through archaeological excavations, bronze products have been found in dozens of ruins.